"If I were threatened by the destruction of my entire works save one, I should crave mercy for the Messe des morts." Berlioz’s fondness for his own Requiem has never been a great secret. No one else could have fostered such a project, so excessive in every way.

Last Friday, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and its musical director Myung-Whun Chung offered a wonderful panorama of French music: Claude Debussy’s impressionism, Olivier Messiaen’s abstraction and Camille Saint-Saëns’ romanticism.